A retired math professor from the Outaouais drove four hours in the snowstorm Tuesday to deliver his important message at the Bill 14 hearings: all cities in this province should operate exclusively in French.
A member of Syndicalistes et progressistes pour un Québec libre, or SPQ libre, Charles Castonguay and his group called on the new law to cater to the French majority before anything else.
The new bill, which would strengthen Quebec’s Bill 101, would also remove the bilingual status of any municipality whose Anglophone population drops below 50 per cent.
“French as a common language is a noble, unifying objective,” he said. “Apparently some Anglophones in these municipalities think that if they want to buy a bus ticket they should be able to buy it in English… can't they even use French that much?”
Anglos who are worried the law is a threat, Castonguay said, should consider the big picture.
“Please respect the French majority,” he said. “French is objectively the language that is on the ropes”
On the other side of the debate, the Lester B. Pearson School Board argued that all Quebecers are equal.
The message, however, seemed lost in translation.
In one exchange, PQ MNA Emilien Pelletier asked if the school board understands the reality of French in an ocean of North American Anglos
The board responded by saying it is not denying that fact, but rather is just trying to survive in its own sea inside Quebec
Language Minister Diane de Courcy wondered why the school board is so opposed to Bill 14's change of the term ‘ethnic minorities’ to ‘cultural communities.’ Some have said cultural communities have little legal standing
“From the information I have it’s just a matter of semantics,” she said.
LBPSB Commissioner Linton Garner disagrees.
“I’m a person from the Black community, I speak English, and I have American roots,” said Garner, explaining how that makes him diverse and how he and others refuse the bland, all-purpose term of cultural communities
There are several more days of hearings planned.
